“You could have sent that card to yourself,” B added.
I put the postcard back into the mailbox, then turned to the men and asked why they weren’t making me do whatever work Sylvia was supposed to be doing.
“That’ll be someone else’s job,” A said.
In the apartment, the men asked if there was any pizza, so I ordered one. Later we ate and watched Die Hard on TV. After the movie, I didn’t wrap the extra pizza in tinfoil and put it in the fridge, like I would have at home. I left the box on the kitchen counter, our glasses and plates and crumpled paper napkins on the coffee table.
I slipped into the bedroom, where I changed into a pair of Sylvia’s pajamas and called my husband.
“It’s me,” I said when he answered.
“I know,” he said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
I lay on the bed, facing the wall. “I’m in a situation.”
“A situation?”
“This is going to sound like a lot to ask, but I want you to come down to Florida tomorrow night. I want you to meet me at Sylvia’s apartment and take me home.”
“You’ve never had much trouble coming and going.”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“Explain it to me.”
“I’m being followed by three people,” I said, though my mind was already moving in a different direction entirely, back to certain times with my husband, when the fights were just starting to get dangerous, when every night, it seemed, we found ourselves on the brink of losing irretrievable ground. There were things people could say to each other that brought about a kind of death, in that you never get over it; you apologize and seek counseling, you tell people your marriage is “recovering,” but you’re presiding over a grave. Of course, I didn’t have such ideas back then, when we still had a chance. I thought we were like rubber. I thought everything would bounce off.
“Who are these people that are following you?” my husband asked.
“Well, actually, now I think it’s down to two.”
“Did your sister get you stoned?”
“I haven’t seen Sylvia in days.” I rubbed my eyes. “She went to the Isle of Youth. It’s an island near Cuba. It has black coral and iguanas.”
Someone knocked on the bedroom door. I heard A’s voice. He wanted to know who I was talking to.
“I have to go,” I said. “Please think about what I asked you to do.”
“What’s that noise?”
“I can’t go into it right now.”
“If you think I’m going to drop everything and fly to Florida, you’re nuts.”
“Do you think speech is inhibiting our spiritual enlightenment?”
“What?” he huffed into the phone. “What, what, what?”
The door opened. I hung up. A and B loomed in the doorway.
“That wasn’t an authorized call,” A said. “I sincerely hope you weren’t calling the cops.”
“I didn’t know I needed permission,” I said. “Anyway, I was just talking to my husband.”
“They told us you weren’t married,” B said.
“They wouldn’t know.” I put on a pink bathrobe and pushed past them, toward the balcony. I leaned against the railing. My hips dug into the metal. The skyline was brilliant with light.
I recalled what Sylvia said that first night in her apartment, about me wanting to know what her life was like. I turned my head from side to side, looking at the men standing next to me. “Now I know how it feels to never be alone, but in absolutely the wrong kind of way.”
“We’re probably no worse than most of the company you keep,” B said.
“You might be right about that,” I said.
I leaned over the edge of the balcony. The ground below looked dark and smooth, like the surface of another planet. I wanted to touch it, to feel the grass against my cheek. I kept leaning and leaning until I was weightless. As I went, I felt something — fingertips? — graze the bottom of my feet. I hit the lawn hard. My legs were tangled in the bushes, my arms sprawled across the grass, as though I were trying to crawl away from the scene. I wondered if this was where Sylvia had landed when she went over the edge. I pictured a chalk outline and my body filling the shape.
My lip was bleeding. I was sweating underneath my pajamas and robe. The back of my head ached. I pressed my face into the grass, not looking up when I heard footsteps or voices. I imagined A and B trying to explain this to their boss: she was there and then she wasn’t.
“There is something very wrong with you,” A said.
I rolled onto my back. Blood had pooled below my bottom lip. I swallowed a mouthful of liquid and grit. The sky had that smudged look again. If my husband knew I’d gone over a balcony, would he come for me then?
B kneeled next to me. He pressed two fingers against my throat.
“The good news is that you’re going to live,” he said.
“What’s the bad news?”
They were going to have to take me back upstairs. I nodded.
“We have to keep you safe,” B said. “No one will be able to make you do anything if your bones are already broken.”
I nodded a second time.
“Why did you do this?” he asked.
“I had to do something.”
A kneeled on my other side. He rested his palm on my forehead. “What hurts?”
* * *
In the apartment, A and B helped me down the hall and into Sylvia’s bed. They put a pillow underneath my left ankle, which was already swelling. They cleaned the dirt and grass from my face and hands with a warm washcloth. Using a Q-tip, A swabbed blood from my bottom lip, then peered into my mouth.
“It’s just a cut.” He held out a coffee mug and I spat blood into the white bottom. “You don’t need any stitches.”
“I feel like I’ve been shot,” I said.
“No, you don’t.” B picked leaves from my hair.
They bandaged my ankle and brought me two pills from Sylvia’s supply and a glass of water. I took the pills and gulped the water like it was the last thing I would ever drink. They turned out the lights. They told me that tomorrow was a new day.
The door opened. I knew they were about to leave. I asked them to wait.
“Why did you drop out of graduate school?” I asked. “Why didn’t you become mathematicians?”
“What do you care?” they said.
“I want to know something about you.”
The room was dark. I blinked, trying to find their silhouettes. I listened for their voices.
“It’s not a very interesting story,” A said before closing the door.
* * *
I woke in the middle of the night with a violent energy inside me. I had to get out of my sister’s room. I limped down the hall and locked myself in the bathroom. I padded the tub with towels and eased myself in. I pulled the shower curtain closed. I uncapped my sister’s gels and shampoos and sniffed the liquids. Everything smelled like a bad imitation of something else. My elbow was bruised. My cut lip throbbed. The back of my head still hurt. I wondered if my brain was bleeding. I heard A and B snoring in the living room, where they’d taken up residence for the night.
I fell asleep in the bathtub. In the morning, I woke to the sound of A and B shouting. Finding my room empty, they thought I had slipped out of the apartment. I got up, using the tile walls for support, and splashed water on my face. There was a greenish bruise on my cheek and dried blood around my mouth. I imagined the previous day repeating itself over and over and that sick feeling returned. When I opened the door and hobbled into the living room, the men stopped yelling and stared.
“I was in the bathroom,” I said.
“The bathroom?” A said. “What were you doing in there?”
“Who cares,” B said. “She was just in the bathroom. We didn’t lose her after all.”
They looked at each other and laughed until they were red-faced and doubled over. I sat on the floor and leaned against the wall. I felt a strange pressure in my cheekbones.